Call Centers

Nice Systems Gives Customers Face Time With CSRs

Nice Systems has introduced a Contact Center Video Recording platform to its Nice Interaction Management suite. While not in great demand yet, this feature surely will draw more interest if customer service and regulatory trends continue on their current trajectory.

The feature allows organizations — banks and financial institutions, in particular — to monitor and track customer service that is provided via video-enabled contact centers. The application augments Nice’s real-time audio capture functionality.

“As companies are adding more and more channels to service their customers, Nice is in the forefront of vendors that support these practices and technologies,” Yohai West, product marketing manager for Nice, told CRM Buyer.

Non-Verbal Cues

Nice Video Recording monitors agent performance over the channels, allowing companies to offer more coaching where needed, for example, and make sure agents adhere to corporate policies and standards. Specific features include the ability to play back, side-by-side, video recordings of agents and customers, as well as the ability to isolate the audio for further evaluation.

Besides quality control, a video logger also gives companies a better sense of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Volumes of information can be intuited by gestures, postures or facial expressions.

That said, this iteration of video logger does not support analytics, West said. “Currently our customers are not looking for that — but we are hearing some expressions of interest.”

Main Use Cases

There are several use cases for this product, West said. Video chat is one. Although not in the mainstream just yet, it is a customer service channel for which demand is quickly growing, he noted.

Another use that holds significant promise is providing customers with access to a remote expert. This is a tailor-made role for the banking industry, which may want to add an extra layer of service to customers who have transactions that are too complicated to handle via the self-service or online model.

If the services being requested are so specialized that the institution’s expert resides in another city, the customer can visit a branch to receive guidance in a video chat.

Not very many banks have this capability now, West said, but some leading institutions are investigating it. Bank of America, for example, “has been very vocal about its plans to pilot this technology in specific cities.”

As more banks adopt this new technology, watch for regulators to require new tech protocols — including the maintenance of chat records.

Erika Morphy has been writing about technology, finance and business issues for more than 20 years. She lives in Silver Spring, Md.

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